Announcing Goal Control — A Mobile App Grounded in Motivational Science
My goal was to create a mobile app. So I created a goal-setting app to help you meet yours.
You’ve probably heard of the Law of Attraction — the belief that the power of positive thinking can compel the universe to provide you with the things that you seek. Its proponents believe that desirable outcomes such as better health, wealth, and happiness are attracted by simply changing your thoughts.
Whether or not you adhere to this belief, you might be surprised to learn there’s actually some real science behind it. No, I’m not saying there’s support for the pseudoscientific claim that “like energy attracts like energy!” Rather, I’m talking about the fact that multiple psychological studies confirm that picturing our goals (and the path leading up to them) better prepares us to achieve.
Olympic athletes have been using goal visualization to improve performance for decades. Psychologists and neuroscientists have shown that the brain patterns activated when a weightlifter lifts heavy weights are similarly activated when the lifter just imagines (visualizes) lifting weights. Mental visualization has even been found to increase gains in physical strength for non-professional athletes.
What’s going on here? Part of it is what psychologists call cognitive reframing — or, more accurately in this context, cognitive restructuring — and it has both clinical and real-life applications. During the cognitive restructuring process, negative, problematic thoughts and reasoning get replaced with positive ones that actually serve you.
Changing Your Self-Talk from Negative to Positive — A Classic Example of Cognitive Restructuring
The simplest form of cognitive restructuring is concerned with autosuggestions. Autosuggestions are those self-induced suggestions, conscious or subconscious, which guide our thoughts, feelings, and behavior:
“I have trouble sleeping.”
“I have a very difficult time losing weight.”
“I’m not good with money.”
These are familiar examples of autosuggestions. When you say things like these — whether internally or to someone else — you are stating your self-image. And modern psychology tells us that our self-image controls our habits.
Self-image and autosuggestions define what we think our normal behavior is, and our minds are surprisingly good at returning us back to that “normal” behavior (and thus, our old patterns). Staying congruent with how you view yourself and personally identify is an incredibly powerful force in human psychology.
In other words, your behavior doesn’t deviate from your internal mapping. If you tell yourself every day that you don’t have abs and are lazy, or that you can never make enough money, or any other negative thought — you are hardwiring your brain for that level of performance and place in life.
Maybe you’ve seen this phenomenon in action already. For example, maybe you’ve gone on a diet and even lost some weight, only to gain it all back. In your mind you continued to see yourself as fat, so you internally justified cheat meals and skipped workouts. You ended up falling back to old habits. Of course, we can’t dismiss all of the other biological reasons that losing weight is hard, but your self-image is very powerful in helping to “reset” what your body wants to do.
Similarly, if you want to gain strength and muscle, you may begin a program and make some gains initially. But if you don’t see yourself as strong, you start to justify taking days off from the gym or doing other things that sabotage your efforts.
The good news? Self-talk works both ways. If you wake up and constantly tell yourself that you are greater than you are and practice positive thinking — then you internalize that message and become that new person (e.g. I am successful, confident, strong, lean, etc). Changing the way you see yourself ignites lasting, meaningful change.
Goal Cards: Powerful Tools for Visualization & Self-Image Transformation
If you’re with me so far, you probably see and understand how positive thinking and visualization has real clout for changing your mindset, and that changing your mindset is essential for achieving goals over the long term. But how? How do you actually perform this cognitive restructuring on yourself?
One practice that has helped me in this department? Creating goal cards. Traditional goal cards are physical index cards that you manually fill out and keep in your pocket. Through focus, visualization, and constant reminders, goal cards inform your future achievement.
The concept is far from new — personal achievement experts have been recommending goal card exercises for decades because they are so versatile and effective. I’ll get into how to create and use goal cards in later posts, but the beauty of goal cards is that they help you think, act, and believe that you have already reached your goals. This prompts a change in self-perception that empowers your achievement. Instead of relying on discipline and willpower to take action, you become that person and the results fall into place.
The Goal Control App: Tried-and-True Goal Setting Techniques, Reimagined for the Smartphone Era
During a period of time when I was in-between clients (ahem, unemployed) I looked for an existing mobile app that would allow me to make a modern-day version of a goal card. However, while there are certainly plenty of goal-oriented apps out there — from habit makers to complicated, feature-rich goal trackers — I was unable to find one with the pure simplicity I needed.
After all, focus is key to visualization. How on earth can you focus when all kinds of smartphone bells and whistles are vying for your attention?
So, I got to work creating the Goal Control app, a clean, striking, minimalist tool for goal card creation. This app was a solo venture, totally outside my normal professional focus (software consulting) but I was armed with time, motivation, and a natural creative bent. Plus, I thought if it could help me, it could surely help someone else.
The goal card method of self-motivation may not be for everybody, but it certainly is one of the most actionable, science-grounded goal-setting practices I’ve come across. With any luck, it will help at least one person bridge the gap between who they are now and who they will become.
I hope you enjoy and appreciate this tool! I’d also like to extend a special thanks to all who inspired me and helped me during this process.
By the way, one of MY goals was to release a mobile application one day. Check!
Goal Control is available now on the Google Play Store and Apple iOS. Give it a try and tell us what you think. Check out our website or follow us on Instagram to learn more.
